Punch
Page 23
Now that’s legal reasoning.
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
The following recipe for the punch used I got from an old Virginia gentleman: lemons, brandy, rum, madeira, poured into a bowl one-third filled with ice (no water), and sweetened. This same recipe was used by the Richmond Light Infantry Blues, an organization that covered itself with glory during our Civil War. The Blues served this punch for years in a handsome India china bowl which held thirty-two gallons and which they greatly mourned when it was lost when the Spotswood Hotel burned on Christmas Eve, 1870.
SOURCE: Sallie E. Marshall Hardy, “John Marshall, Third Chief Justice of the United States, as Son, Brother, Husband and Friend” in The Green Bag, December 1896
SUGGESTED PROCEDURE
Prepare an oleo-saccharum of the peel of twelve lemons and 2 cups of light, fine-grained raw sugar. Add 16 ounces of strained lemon juice and stir until sugar has dissolved. Add one 750-milliliter bottle each of Jamaican rum, VSOP cognac and rainwater Madeira. Stir well and pour into Punch bowl filled a third of the way with ice cubes. Stir and let sit in cool place for twenty minutes before serving.
NOTES
Do not operate heavy machinery or make constitutional law after consuming this. For the rum, I like something in the Planter’s Best line here, with just maybe a dollop of Pirate Juice to spark it up.
YIELD: 12 cups.
DANIEL WEBSTER’S PUNCH
In my mind, I can’t divorce the Daniel Webster of history, the great Massachusetts senator, the orator, the statesman, from the Daniel Webster of the movies, the one played by Edward Arnold in William Dieterle’s 1941 version of Stephen Vincent Benét’s sardonic fable “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” As played by Arnold, he’s a bluff, jovial sort, a social man who knows how to get along with the people, and yet he has quiet, watchful eyes and the native shrewdness to know bullshit when he sees it, no matter how many flowers are growing out of it. Actually, in this case, fiction and history pretty much agree.
As part of that joviality, Webster did nothing to combat a reputation for liking to take a drink now and then. But while he might have forgotten himself from time to time, he seems to have been one of those drinkers who will sip from the glass and expound on the nectar within, only to set it quietly aside when the conversation has moved on. That makes me somewhat suspect the authenticity of this recipe for Punch, labeled as “Daniel Webster’s” by the author of a New York bartender’s book published in 1869, seventeen years after Webster’s death. The anonymous mixographer adds the following introduction:If the god-like Daniel cared nothing for riches he did love a good punch, and he knew how to concoct a drink fit for gods. Sometime before his death, he gave his old life long friend, Major Brooks, of Boston, his benefaction and blessing, and left him, as the last earthly good he could bestow, the following recipe for what is now known here among the elect, as the Webster punch.
Well, perhaps. But there were other Webster Punches in circulation, including one whose reputed composition sounds suspiciously like Regent’s Punch. Indeed, for a while there, in the middle of the century, the demand for a glass of Daniel Webster’s Punch seems to have been a common way of playing “stump the bartender.” Could it be that Webster was quite willing to let folks think he had a special way of making Punch, without going to all the trouble of actually having one? With that caveat, it must be admitted that this recipe makes just the kind of Punch that Webster, who was not averse to a little luxury in life, would have sipped with genuine enthusiasm.
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
One bottle of pure old French brandy (smuggled direct preferred), one bottle sherry, one ditto old Jamaica rum, two ditto claret, one ditto Champagne, one dozen lemons, one pint strong tea, sugar, strawberries, and pineapple to suit the taste, plenty of ice, no water.
SOURCE: Steward & Barkeeper’s Manual, 1869
SUGGESTED PROCEDURE
Prepare an oleo-saccharum of the peel of twelve lemons and 2 cups light raw sugar, such as Florida Crystals. Add 1 pint lemon juice and 1 pint black tea, made with 2 teaspoons loose black tea or two tea bags and steeped for ten minutes. Stir to dissolve sugar and strain into sealable two-gallon jug. Add one 750-milliliter bottle each of cognac, oloroso sherry and Jamaican rum; two 750-milliliter bottles of Bordeaux; 1 pineapple peeled, cored and cut into half-inch slices and a 1-pint box of cored strawberries. Refrigerate for an hour and serve by pouring into a two-gallon bowl three-quarters full of ice cubes and topping off with a bottle of chilled brut Champagne.
NOTES
For the cognac, use the best you can afford. An XO would not be out of place here. The oloroso sherry should be of the medium variety, but not too lush. For the rum, see the notes for Quoit Club Punch on page 244. The wine doesn’t have to be from Bordeaux, but it does have to be dry, red and rich. Nutmeg on top of the finished Punch is a kindness.
CHATHAM ARTILLERY PUNCH—ORIGINAL
One of the three recipes for bowl-sized Punches I included in Imbibe! was a version of this, formerly Savannah’s favorite way of putting visitors in their place. The 1907 recipe I printed for it, while a good one, came with an acknowledgment that back when the Chatham Artillery first made it, “its vigor . . . was much greater than at present, experience having taught the rising generation to modify the receipt of their forefathers to conform to the weaker constitutions of their progeny.” I always hate to print a weaker recipe when a stronger one exists or, with exceptions, a newer one when there’s an older one.
I was therefore very pleased, some weeks after that book was published, to come across a little item in the Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle recounting the origins and original composition of this particular piece of ordnance. “Its history is this,” the article explains:back in the fifties the Republican Blues, which were organized in 1808, visited Macon and were welcomed back by the Chatham Artillery. Mr. A. H. Luce, since dead, proposed to brew a new punch in honor of the Blues. Mr. William Davidson furnished the spirits.
Note that the Republican Blues here are the Savannah ones, not the Richmond ones with the gargantuan bowls of Quoit Club Punch. It must’ve been fun to be in one of those regiments, in peacetime, anyway. The Punch as originally made is utterly devastating. I can vouch for that, having now made it many times. To quote the Chronicle, “As a vanquisher of men its equal has never been found.”
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
The concoction was thus made: One of the horse buckets of ordinary size was filled with finely crushed ice; a quart of good brandy, whisky and rum each was poured into the ice, and sugar and lemon added. The bucket was filled to the brim with Champagne, and the whole stirred into delirious deliciousness. Rumor hath it every solitary man of the Blues was put under the table by this deceiving, diabolical and most delightful compound.
SOURCE: The Augusta Chronicle, quoted in the San Antonio Light, 1885
SUGGESTED PROCEDURE
Prepare an oleo-saccharum of the peel of twelve lemons and 2 cups light raw sugar, such as Florida Crystals. Add 1 pint lemon juice, stir to dissolve sugar and strain into an empty 750-milliliter bottle. Add water to fill any remaining space in bottle, seal and refrigerate. To serve, fill a horse bucket of ordinary size or a two-and-a-half-gallon Punch bowl with crushed or finely cracked ice, pour in bottled shrub and add one 750-milliliter bottle each of VSOP cognac, bourbon whiskey and Jamaican-style rum. Top off with three bottles of chilled brut Champagne. Stir. Then smile.
NOTES
There’s little to say here beyond use good bourbon and real Champagne and make sure that the rum has some bouquet to it, but not too much—Planter’s Best rather than Pirate Juice. Round up the usual suspects.
FRANK FORESTER’S PUNCH
To me there are few more poignant stories in the history of American letters than that of Frank Forester. In part, it has to do with the details of his life. Like me, he was a journeyman writer with a literary background, earning his living by doggedly pursuing a nonliterary genre. Like me, he liked good food, good
drink and good company. But he died by his own hand, shunned by his editors, his friends and his family, in the house he never completed, in—worst of all—Newark.
But if I do not envy his fate, I do envy his skill. Henry William Herbert, to give his real name, was born in England to the clergyman son of a lord, educated at Eton and Cambridge, and exiled to America by his family when he couldn’t pay his considerable debts. Once here, he supported himself by writing anything he could get paid for. He finally hit his stride when, as “Frank Forester,” he took to writing about hunting and fishing. His best novels, The Deerstalkers, My Shooting Box and The Warwick Woodlands, are set in the parts of New Jersey and lower New York State that are now covered by malls, tract “homes,” Outback Steakhouses and tight-meshed, strangling strands of blacktop. In his day, they were game-filled uplands, not virgin forest but not yet tainted either, and he captured their beauty as no one has. To read his description of the “defile through which the Ramapo, one of the loveliest streams eye ever looked upon, comes rippling with its crystal waters over bright pebbles, on its way to join the two kindred rivulets which form the fair Passaic” is to weep for what we have done. Today, the Ramapo meets the Passaic a half mile north of Route 80, near the Willowbrook Mall.
Perhaps Forester devoted himself too much to the bottle. Indeed, his works slosh with old Ferintosh Scotch whiskey, good cognac, Holland gin, Jersey applejack and lots and lots of fine Champagne, always described in loving detail. But these potables were always consumed with a conviviality that, by the end, he must have yearned for more than anything in the world.
That conviviality is on full display here, as Forester’s recurring character Henry Archer makes a version of Regent’s Punch for the author’s fictional alter ego and namesake (both Englishmen) and Tom Draw, the Jerry Thomas-like New Jersey tavern-keeper who served as the token American in Forester’s fantasy world of sport and homosocial good cheer.
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
“It is directly contrary to my rule, Frank, to drink before a good day’s shooting—and a good day I mean to have to-morrow!—but I am thirsty, and the least thought chilly; so here goes for a debauch! Tim, look in my box with the clothes, and you will find two flasks of curaçao; bring them down, and a dozen lemons, and some lump sugar—look alive! and you, Tom, out with your best brandy; I’ll make a jorum that will open your eyes tight before you’ve done with it. That’s right, Tim; now get the soup tureen, the biggest one, and see that it’s clean. . . . [B]ring half-a-dozen of Champagne, a bucket full of ice, and then go down into the kitchen, and make two quarts of green tea, as strong as possible; and when it’s made set it to cool in the ice-house!”
In a few minutes all the ingredients were at hand; the rind, peeled carefully from all the lemons, was deposited with two tumblers full of finely powdered sugar in the bottom of the tureen; thereupon were poured instantly three pints of pale old Cognac; and these were left to steep, without admixture, until Tim Matlock made his entrance with the cold, strong, green tea; two quarts of this, strained clear, were added to the brandy, and then two flasks of curaçao!
Into this mixture a dozen lumps of clear ice were thrown, and the whole stirred up till the sugar was entirely suspended; then pop! Pop! went the long necks, and their creaming nectar was discharged into the bowl; and, by the body of Bacchus—as the Italians swear—and by his soul too, which he never steeped in such delicious nectar, what a drink that was, when it was completed!
SOURCE: Frank Forester, The Warwick Woodlands, 1851
NOTES
Given that a tumbler holds 8 ounces, the only remotely murky things here are the disposition of the peeled lemons and the size of the curaçao flasks. For the former, I say juice ’em, strain ’em and in with the juice. For the latter, well, I know the stuff came in little stoneware flasks, but their precise capacity has eluded me. But maraschino flasks contained a pint—probably a beverage pint, which is 12 ounces—so why not assume that curaçao flasks are the same and pitch in with a 750-milliliter bottle of Grand Marnier? It does no harm, anyway.
YIELD: 36 cups.
YALE COLLEGE PUNCH
In 2007: Trashcan Punch. In 1869: Yale College Punch. Enough said.
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
One quart bottle of brandy; 1 pint bottle of Champagne; two bottles of soda water; 4 tablespoons of powdered sugar; 2 slices pineapple, cut up. Use Champagne goblets. Six Yale students will get away with the above very cleverly.
SOURCE: Steward & Barkeeper’s Manual, 1869
SUGGESTED PROCEDURE
In a bowl, steep 2 half-inch slices of peeled, cored fresh pineapple in a 750-milliliter bottle of VSOP cognac for an hour or two under refrigeration. To serve, add 20 ounces soda water and 2 ounces superfine sugar, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, and then add 12 ounces cold Champagne.
NOTES
It bears repeating that a “quart” bottle of wine or spirits was actually one-sixth of a gallon and a “pint” one-twelfth. Personally, I hate leaving Champagne to sit around in the bottle and go flat. When I make this, I pour the rest of the bottle in.
YIELD: 8 cups.
LIGHT GUARD PUNCH
The Michigan Light Guard, the Georgia Light Guard, the Lawrence Light Guard, the La Grange Light Guard, the Coldwater Light Guard—if there’s one thing America had plenty of in the days before the Civil War, it was Light Guards. Every town that had any pretensions to high society organized one, with fancy uniforms and rich men’s sons. But if there’s one Light Guard that’s probably responsible for this excellent, rather extravagant Punch, it would have to be the “Tigers”—the famous Light Guard of New York. A society outfit through and through, before the war they were tagged by city wits with the line “in peace . . . invincible, in war invisible.” But after Fort Sumter, they were (as George Augustus Sala, the peerless observer of midcentury American life, noted) “not mere carpet knights, but distinguished as being among the earliest to volunteer in this monstrous war, on whose fatal fields they have left many a brave member of their corps.” In which case, the anonymous so-and-so who rewrote Jerry Thomas’s book in 1887 was probably correct when he pointed out, “This is sufficient for a mixed company of twenty, not twenty of the Light Guard.”
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
(For a party of twenty.)
3 bottles of Champagne.
1 bottle of pale sherry.
1 bottle of Cognac.
1 bottle of Sauterne.
1 pineapple, sliced.
4 lemons, sliced.
Sweeten to taste, mix in a punch-bowl, cool with a large lump of ice, and serve immediately.
SOURCE: Jerry Thomas, Bar-Tenders Guide, 1862
SUGGESTED PROCEDURE
Steep the lemons and the pineapple in the cognac for three or four hours in the refrigerator. When service is imminent, in a two-gallon Punch bowl dissolve 4 ounces superfine sugar in the sherry and Sauternes, incorporate the cognac and fruit, and add in the block of ice and Champagne (normally I would suggest constructing this in an iced bowl, but this Punch is strong enough that it could use a little dilution from the ice).
NOTES
The pineapple and lemon should both be in thin rings. As usual, it’s difficult to prescribe for the sugar; the pineapple adds sweetness, but the Champagne soaks it up. I usually begin with 4 ounces and then adjust from there. For the Sauternes, see Captain Radcliffe’s Punch in Chapter XI. For the sherry, use a fino or light amontillado, although white port is an interesting, if more lush, substitute.
USS RICHMOND PUNCH
The Richmond looked like a clipper ship with a stumpy little smokestack sticking up from the middle of its deck. She was a “screw sloop,” one of the new, efficient propeller-driven steamboats that were beginning to replace the awkward side-wheel paddleboats of song and story. Christened in 1860, a year before Fort Sumter, she would become one of the Union Navy’s most modern ships and consequently sailed wherever the shot was thickest. She had a hole punched in her side by t
he world’s first ironclad warship, the CSS Manassas; she helped to take New Orleans; and she stormed Mobile Bay with Admiral Farragut, for which action twenty-seven of her sailors and three of her marines were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
That was not the end of her career: in fact, she would serve until 1917, for a total of fifty-seven years. In 1870, she was flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron; in the 1880s, of the Asiatic Squadron, with ports of call in Yokohama and the like. By then, her half-rotten timbers were a haven to rats and bedbugs, and her stubby eleven-inch smoothbore iron guns were museum pieces, incapable of even denting the armor of the sleek, all-steel battleships of the day, with their turrets full of long, ten-inch rifled guns, a single shot from which could turn her to matchsticks. What kept her afloat?